Development Prospect of Salt Cavern Gas Storage and New Research Progress of Salt Cavern Leaching in China

China has an urgent demand for natural gas storage because of the current bad situation of natural gas supply, consumption and storage. Based on the investigation of distribution and geology of salt mines, it is found that China has basic geological conditions and necessary brine treatment ability for building large-scale natural gas storage in a short term. And, salt cavern gas storage will be the main development tendency of natural gas storage in China. Based on the experiences of the authors who participate in the whole building process of Chinese salt cavern gas storage, the problems appearing in the salt cavern leaching projects is analyzed. Then, some new research progresses obtained by the authors’ team are briefly summarized. Aiming at the problem of irregular cavern shape caused by interlayers, the collapse mechanism is revealed, and the leaching control technology of interlayers is proposed. Aiming at the problem of overmuch irregular cavern shapes and low leaching efficiency, the optimization methods of cavern leaching process are proposed, and a new salt cavern leaching design software applying to multi-bedded salt mine is developed.